Eliciting Care
Health and Power in Northern Thailand

Bo Kyeong Seo (Author)

9780299326906

Hardback, published 23 June 2020

192 pages, 8 black & white illustrations, 2 maps, 3 tables
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.1 cm, 0.415 kg

An extraordinarily nuanced and sensitive anthropological treatment of the experience of the vulnerable and those who care for them in a universal health care system that has been widely regarded as a model for the industrializing world." - Joseph Harris, Boston University

"Based on impressive ethnographic research that considers the perspectives of both patients and health care providers, this book provides a compelling account of how the country's ambitious universal health care program is actually working out on the ground." - Nancy Eberhardt, Knox College

In 2001, Thailand introduced universal health care reforms that have become some of the most celebrated in the world, providing almost its entire population with health protection coverage. However, this remarkable implementation of health policy is not without its weaknesses. Drawing on two years of fieldwork at a district hospital in northern Thailand, Bo Kyeong Seo examines how people in marginal and dependent social positions negotiate the process of obtaining care.

Using the broader concept of elicitation, Seo analyzes the social encounters and forces that shape caregivers. These dynamics challenge dichotomies of subjugation and resistance, consent and coercion, and dependence and autonomy. The intimate and moving stories at the core of Eliciting Care from patients and providers draw attention to a broader, critically important phenomenon at the hospital level. Seo's poignant ethnography engages with feminist theory on the ethics of care, and in so doing, makes a significant contribution to emerging work in the field of health policy and politics.